‘No, Mom, please. I’m just talking, okay? In fact, this guy’s so much better than the last one. He’s funny too.’
‘That’s good.’ The Mother would nod, her face still serious. ‘The way you’re always willing to give people a decent chance. That’s a good trait.’
In those days, when Josie’s health was quite good, she still liked to eat her evening meal after the Mother had come in from her work. This meant we would often go up to Josie’s bedroom to wait for the Mother’s return – and to watch the Sun go to his resting place.
Just as Josie had promised, the bedroom rear window had a clear view across the fields all the way to the horizon, allowing us to watch the Sun sinking into the ground at the end of his day. Although Josie always talked about ‘the field’, it was in fact three fields adjoining one another, and anyone looking carefully could see the posts marking their boundaries. The grass was tall in all three fields, and when the wind blew, it would move as if invisible passers-by were hurrying through it.
The sky from the bedroom rear window was far larger than the gap of sky at the store – and capable of surprising variations. Sometimes it was the color of the lemons in the fruit bowl, then could turn to the gray of the slate chopping boards. When Josie wasn’t well, it could turn the color of her vomit or her pale feces, or even develop streaks of blood. Sometimes the sky would become divided into a series of squares, each one a different shade of purple to its neighbor.
There was a soft cream couch beside the bedroom rear window which I named in my mind ‘the Button Couch’. Although it faced inwards into the room, Josie and I liked to kneel on it, our arms against its cushioned back, and gaze out at the sky and the fields. Josie appreciated how much I enjoyed the last part of the Sun’s journey, and we tried to watch it from the Button Couch whenever possible. There was a time, when the Mother had come back earlier than usual, and she and Josie were talking on the highstools of the Island – and to give privacy, I’d gone to stand beside the refrigerator. The Mother that evening was in an energetic mood, speaking rapidly, recounting humorous things about the people in her office, pausing every now and then to laugh, sometimes in long bursts that made her almost lose breath. In the middle of this talk, when the Mother seemed about to break into more laughter, Josie interrupted to say:
‘Mom, that’s just great. But do you mind if Klara and I go up to my room for a minute? Klara just loves to watch the sunset and if we don’t go now we’ll miss it.’
When she said this I glanced round and saw the kitchen had become filled with the Sun’s evening light. The Mother was staring at Josie, and I thought she was about to become angry. But then her face softened into her kind smile, and she said: ‘Of course, honey. You go ahead. Go watch your sunset. Then we’ll get supper.’
Apart from the fields and the sky, there was something else we could see from the bedroom rear window that drew my curiosity: a dark box-like shape at the end of the furthest field. It didn’t move as the grass shifted around it, and when the Sun came so low it was almost touching the grass, the dark shape remained in front of his glow. It was on the evening Josie risked the Mother’s anger on my behalf that I pointed it out to her. When I did so, she raised herself higher on the Button Couch and moved her hands to her eyes to shade them.
‘Oh, you must mean Mr McBain’s barn.’
‘A barn?’
‘It’s maybe not really a barn because it’s open on two sides. More a shelter, I guess. Mr McBain keeps stuff in there. I went there once with Rick.’
‘I wonder why the Sun would go for his rest to a place like that.’
‘Yeah,’ Josie said. ‘You’d think the Sun would need a palace, minimum. Maybe Mr McBain’s done a big upgrade since I was last there.’
‘I wonder when it was Josie went there.’
‘Oh, a long time ago now. Rick and I were still quite little. Before I got sick.’
‘Was there anything unusual nearby? A gateway? Or perhaps steps going down into the earth?’
‘Uh uh. Nothing like that. Just the barn. And we were glad of it too because we were little and we’d got really tired walking all that way. Mind you, it was nowhere near sunset. If there’s an entrance to a palace, it might be hidden. Maybe the doors open just before the Sun gets there? I saw a movie like that once, where all these bad guys had their HQ inside a volcano, and what you thought was a lava lake on top slid open just before they came down in helicopters. Maybe the Sun’s palace works the same way. Anyway, me and Rick, we weren’t looking for it. We’d gone out there for the hell of it, then we got hot and wanted some shade. So we sat inside Mr McBain’s barn for a time then came back.’ She touched my arm gently. ‘Wish we’d seen more, but we didn’t.’
The Sun had become just a short line glowing through the grass.
‘There he goes,’ Josie said. ‘Hope he gets a good sleep.’
‘I wonder who this boy was. This Rick.’
‘Rick? Only my best friend.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Hey, Klara, did I just say something wrong?’
‘No. But…it’s now my duty to be Josie’s best friend.’
‘You’re my AF. That’s different. But Rick, well, we’re going to spend our lives together.’
The Sun was now barely a pink mark in the grass.
‘There’s nothing Rick won’t do for me,’ she said. ‘But he worries too much. Always worrying things will get in our way.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, you know. The whole love and romance stuff to figure out. And I guess there’s the other thing too.’
‘Other thing?’
‘But he’s worrying over nothing. Because with me and Rick it got decided a long time ago. It’s not going to change.’
‘Where is this Rick now? Does he live nearby?’
‘Lives next door. I’ll introduce you. Can’t wait for you two to meet!’
* * *
—
I met Rick the following week, on the day I first saw Josie’s house from the outside.
Josie and I had been having many friendly arguments about how one part of the house connected to another. She wouldn’t accept, for instance, that the vacuum cleaner closet was directly beneath the large bathroom. Then one morning, after another such friendly argument, Josie said:
‘Klara, you’re driving me crazy with this. As soon as I’m done with Professor Helm, I’m taking you outside. We’re going to check all this out from out there.’